The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology

Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ronald Jacobs, and Philip Smith

Description

Since sociologists returned to the study of culture in the past several decades, a pursuit all but anathema for a generation, cultural sociology has emerged as a vibrant field. Edited by three leading cultural sociologists, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology presents the full theoretical and methodological vitality of this critically significant new area.The Handbook gathers together works by authors confronting the crucial choices all cultural sociologists face today: about analytic priorities, methods, topics, epistemologies, ideologies, and even modes of writing. It is a vital collection of preeminent thinkers studying the ways in which culture, society, politics, and economy interact in the world.

Organized by empirical areas of study rather
than particular theories or competing intellectual strands, the Handbook addresses power, politics, and states; economics and organization; mass media; social movements; religion; aesthetics; knowledge; and health. Allowing the reader to observe tensions as well as convergences, the collection displays the value of cultural sociology not as a niche discipline but as a way to view and understand the many facets of contemporary society. The first of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology offers comprehensive and immediate access to the real developments and disagreements taking place in the field, and deftly exemplifies how cultural sociology provides a new way of seeing and modeling social facts.

"This groundbreaking, readable handbook [is] the first single volume to
attempt to unify its diverse contemporary applications in a wide range of traditional genres of sociology...Valuable for college universities and libraries supporting undergraduate and graduate degree programs in sociology and history."-CHOICE

The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology

Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ronald Jacobs, and Philip Smith

Table of Contents

PART I The Cultural Method in Sociology2. Cultural Sociology as a Research Program: Post-Positivism, Meaning, and CausalityIsaac Ariail Reed3. Rationalization Processes inside Cultural SociologyRichard Biernacki4. Four Ways to Measure Culture: Social Science, Hermeneutics, and the Cultural TurnJohn Mohr and Craig Rawlings

PART II The Economic as Culture5. Culture and the EconomyCarlo Tognato6. Culture and Economic LifeLyn Spillman

PART III The Political as Culture7. From Moral Sentiments to Civic Engagement: Sociological Analysis as Responsible SpectatorshipRobin Wagner-Pacifici8.
Reinventing the Concept of Civic CulturePaul Lichterman9. Cultural Sociology and Civil Society in a World of Flows: Recapturing Ambiguity, Hybridity and the PoliticalGianpaolo Biaocchi

PART IV The Media as Culture10. Mediatized Disasters in the Global Age: On the Ritualization of CatastropheSimon Cottle11. Media, Intellectuals, the Public Sphere, and the Story of Barack Obama in 2008Eleanor Townsely12. Entertainment Media and the Aesthetic Public SphereRonald Jacobs

PART V Race and Immigration as Culture13. Rethinking the Relationship of African American Men to the StreetAl Young14. Ethnicity, Race, Nationhood, Foreignness, Etc.: Prolegomena to a Cultural Sociology of Difference-Based InteractionsGiuseppe
Sciortino15. Burning Schools/Building Bridges: Ethnographical Touchdowns in the Civil SphereMats Trondman

PART VI Religion as Culture16. The Constitution of Religious Political Violence: Institution, Culture and PowerRoger Friedland17. Globalization, Culture and ReligionKenneth Thompson

PART VII Social Movements as Culture18. Narrative and Social MovementsFrancesca Polletta and Bobby Chen19. The Politics of Authenticity: Civic Individualism and the Cultural Roots of Gay NormalizationSteven Seidman, Chet Meeks, and James Dean

PART VIII Trauma as Culture20. Rethinking Conflict and Memory: the case of NanjingBarry Schwartz21. Cultural Trauma: Emotion and NarrationRon Eyerman22. The Chinese
Construction and Repression of Trauma: The Rape of NanjingJeffrey C. Alexander and Rui Gao

PART IX Events as Culture23. Events as Templates of Possibility: An Analytic Typology of Political FactsMabel Berezin24. Cultural Pragmatics and the Structure and Flow of Democratic PoliticsJason Mast

PART X Materiality as Culture25. Consumption as Cultural Interpretation: Taste, Performativity and Navigating The Forest Of ObjectsIan Woodward26. The Force of Embodiment: Bodies, Dispositions and CultureArthur Frank27. Music Sociology in a New KeyLisa McCormick

PART XI Knowledge as Culture28. Narrating Global WarmingPhilip Smith

PART XII Classification and Ambiguity as Culture29. Broadening the
Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Focus On Mundane Life in OrganizationsNina Eliasoph and Jade Lo30. Inbetweenness and AmbivalenceBernhard Giesen

The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology

Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ronald Jacobs, and Philip Smith

Author Information

Jeffrey Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Ronald Jacobs is Professor of Sociology at SUNY-Albany. Philip Smith is Professor of Sociology at Yale.

Contributors:

Jeffrey Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, works in the areas of theory, culture and politics, developing a meaning-centered approach to the tensions and possibilities of modern social life. He is a Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology, also at Yale.

Gianpaolo Baiocchi is associate professor of sociology and international studies at Brown University.

Mabel Berezin, Associate Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, is a comparative historical sociologist whose work explores the intersection of political and cultural institutions with an emphasis on modern and contemporary Europe.

Richard Biernacki teaches sociology and history at the University of California, San Diego.

Pang Ching Bobby Chen is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

Simon Cottle is Professor of Media and Communications and Deputy Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.

James Joseph Dean is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University.

Nina Eliasoph is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.

Ron Eyerman is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

Arthur Frank is professor of sociology at the University of Calgary.

Roger Friedland is Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rui
Gao is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a junior fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

Bernhard Giesen holds the chair for macro-sociology in the Department of History and Sociology at the University of Konstanz (Germany) and is a member of the executive board of the Center of Excellence 16 "Cultural Foundations of Social Integration" at the University of Konstanz.

Ronald Jacobs is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His research focuses on culture, media, and the public sphere.

Paul Lichterman is Professor of Sociology and Religion at the University of Southern California.

Jade Lo is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of
California, Los Angeles.

Jason L. Mast is a postdoctoral fellow with the Karl Mannheim Chair of Cultural Studies at Zeppelin University in Germany.

Lisa McCormick is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Haverford College.

Chet Meeks was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgia State University.

John Mohr is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he also serves as Director of the Social Sciences Survey Research Center.

Francesca Polletta is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

Craig Rawlings is an Institute for Education Science (IES) Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Institute for Research in Education Policy and Practice
(IREPP).

Isaac Ariail Reed is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is also the Director of the Sociology Honors Program.

Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Georgia, is author of numerous articles and seven books, including Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory, which traces popular views of Lincoln from 1865 to the 1920s.